Unrequited (2 page)

“One Coke, coming right up.” The young man walked back into the crowd.

He reappeared a few minutes later and offered Ashton a red plastic cup with some sort of dark soda inside.

“Thanks,” she said and sipped the drink.

They started talking about school and classes, but Ashton was having a hard time remembering the things he told her. She could hear herself asking for his name, but she couldn’t make out his response.

Everything around her became a little foggy. The young man was still talking, but Ashton couldn’t focus on what he said. His fingers ran down the side of Ashton's face. She tried to brush his hand away, but her body wouldn’t follow any of the directions her brain was sending out. The thought came to her mind that her drink had been spiked, but she couldn’t seem to figure out how to say it, or how to get out of her chair and find Julia.

The young man grabbed her arm and started to lead her out of the room and out of the house. Ashton tried to call out for help as they passed through a crowd of now-hazy faces, but her mouth couldn't form the words. Before long, they were outside and walking toward a wooded area. Ashton tried to pull away, but her body still wouldn’t listen to her screaming mind.

“Come on, darlin', just a little further and then we can sit down,” he said against her ear.

The woods, the stars, the ground…everything seemed blurry, but what was about to happen was clear in Ashton's mind. Terror crept through the fog enveloping her, and somehow, she knew she had to stop this guy. She refused to be one of those girls that didn’t fight back. Her whole being was trying to fight the effects of the drugged drink.

“Stop,” she tried to yell, but she wasn't sure if any sound actually came out.

Suddenly, they stopped walking, and she was being pulled to the ground. Ashton was gripped with a type of fear she didn’t know could exist. As she finally accepted that she couldn’t physically stop the attack, she sent up a prayer to Heaven that she be spared in some way. If she had to endure this, she prayed she’d be rendered unconscious. These were memories she wouldn’t want to keep. Already she knew she would be haunted by the way his breath felt as it hit her face, and that was merely a hint of the atrocities to come.

She tried to wish herself away as she felt his hands on her, pulling at her clothes, and then suddenly the hands were gone. Ashton could hear the rustling of branches and leaves. She could hear the sounds of a struggle. She could hear gasping breath and a muffled scream.

Ashton tried to raise herself up and see what had happened, but she was still too weak. She clawed at the ground, trying to find something to use as a weapon, in case her attacker came back…or this new attacker came for her.

“Shh, shh, don't move love. It's going to be all right.” A voice was speaking to her. She liked this man's voice. It was comforting. Someone was going to rescue her. Ashton let go of the dirt and sticks around her, and let herself finally drift away into the darkness of the drink. She knew she was going to be okay.

“She's waking up.” Ashton could hear her mother's voice.

“Ashton, oh, baby, look at me.” Her mother was sobbing now.

As her eyes opened and her vision cleared, Ashton could see she was in a hospital room. Her mother and father were standing beside her. A nurse shuffled in and started checking monitors and rattling off information.

“What happened?” Ashton could hear herself ask, but her voice didn’t sound quite right.

“You were attacked, honey, don't you remember?” Her father was talking now, and patting her hair, as he did whenever she was upset.

“I…I remember a little. There was a boy. He gave me a drink and took me to the woods. Oh, Mama, Daddy, I'm so sorry I went to that party. I'm so sorry.” She started to sob. It was all starting to come back to her now.

“Ashton, you don't worry about that right now. We're just glad you’re here.” Her mother started to cry even harder.

“Did they catch him? I don't remember his name, but I know what he looked like. I can tell the police.” Ashton wanted to make sure that guy, whoever he was, paid for what he had done.

Her parents exchanged troubled looks with one another.

“What's wrong? Is he saying it's my fault?” She looked from her mother to her father.

“He was found dead,” her father said with a grim face.

Ashton couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Just then, two police officers came into the room. She told them everything about the party, the drink, being pulled into the woods, and about the second man.

“A second man was there?” the officer asked.

“Yes, I couldn’t see him clearly, it was so dark and I was feeling so confused, but there was definitely a second man. He pulled the attacker off of me, and I could hear them struggling, and someone screamed. Then, he came to me and told me everything would be all right. That's the last thing I remember.” Ashton was exhausted. The previous night felt like some horrible dream.

The officers turned toward the door, like they were about to leave. Just as they were crossing into the hall, one of the officers turned and came back into the room.

“Miss, about the second man, is he the one who did this to you?” The officer motioned toward Ashton's neck. She lifted her hand and felt a large, thick bandage on her throat. When she pressed it, she winced in pain.

“I don't remember. I don't remember at all.” She felt a wave of panic. She had been injured in a gruesome manner, but she didn’t have any recollection of how it had happened. Even more unsettling was a strange sensation traveling through her body. Ashton realized something within her was different, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

The officers left, and Ashton asked her mother for a mirror. Reluctantly, Elaine Wallace retrieved the one in her purse, and handed it to her daughter.

Ashton opened the mirror and looked at herself. Remarkably, the horror of the night before didn’t seem to have left a mark on her face. Actually, she looked somewhat refreshed. She moved her hand to the bandage and began to remove it. When it fell away, she held the mirror up again and saw what the officers had asked her about.

On her neck were two large holes.

***

Ashton touched her neck, as she had done many times since that night. The holes had long ago healed. They didn’t even leave a scar. Not a visible scar anyway. Sometimes she wished the marks were still there so the world would see she'd been through something horrible, and maybe then she could be understood and accepted for what she had become.

“Vampire.”

She spoke out loud to her bedroom. She'd barely been able to say the word over the past several months. Initially, none of the Wallace’s knew the implications of the attack. How could they? It wasn't until Ashton began to experience physical changes that it became clear something unknown had taken seed. Through research and study, her parents were the first ones to finally realize and accept their daughter was now a creature from storybooks and horror films. It took Ashton far longer to acknowledge she'd not only been bitten by a vampire, but had now become one herself.

The past year had been a trial. There had been the days and nights of agony as her body went through unexpected changes. For a time it felt like her blood was a fiery poison within her veins, and the pain of it coursed through every inch of her body. She would at times be sleepless, and stay awake for days. In other turns she would feel almost drugged and stay in bed for a week. As a child she remembered getting aches in her legs, and her mother always called them “growing pains.” She felt a new type of growing pain now, but it attacked every part of her body, creating havoc. Her eyes somehow seemed to get the worst of it, and for a period of time turned crimson before transitioning back to an arresting shade of green that was far from the soft hazel eyes Ashton had grown up with.

Even so, the pain was less terrifying than the idea she might soon crave the unthinkable: blood. Her parents had also assumed she would require a new diet that could only be harvested from a living creature. Ashton made it clear she would never ever drink blood, because drinking blood would mean she truly was a monster. Still, her parents persisted and tried to persuade her to try this new form of nourishment. Elaine was a nurse, and had brought home a packet of blood from the hospital, assuming her daughter would need it to survive and eventually give in. Ashton wouldn’t be tempted, and had decided she would suffer the consequences…even if it meant she would die.

It turned out she didn’t need the blood after all. She didn’t need food or water either. She could consume regular fare if she wanted to, but it didn’t have any sort of satisfying. Basically, she could just exist, even if she chose to eat nothing. That was one of the many vampire myths her family debunked since Ashton's change.

The other early worry had been sunlight. For weeks, Elaine was terrified to let Ashton have any sort of contact with the sun. As far as any of them knew, she would turn to a pile of dust if she went out in daylight.

Ashton was determined to find out, and if she turned to powder, so be it. This life of eternal living didn’t exactly seem ideal anyway. Armed with her courage, Ashton had walked out into a bright sunny Georgia day, and nothing happened. She felt fine and she looked fine. As far as she could tell, the sun had absolutely no effect on her. Later she would discover that too much sun would make her especially tired, but even so, it was nothing lethal.

All in all, her life pretty much could go on as usual…except for the fact she would probably never age, and of course, would never die. The uncertainty of exactly what
would
happen was one of the reasons Ashton had agreed to her parents’ plan of moving and starting fresh. At least in Belle Ridge nobody knew of her strange attack, and nobody knew she was actually nineteen and trying to finish high school. Here she could just pass the next year of life in anonymity and then figure out what to do with the several hundred years after that.

The smell of fried chicken wafted through the bedroom door. Her mother was making dinner, and would probably need help peeling potatoes and setting the table. Ashton rolled off her bed and went to help her mother, all the while thinking of how much she would miss being able to really enjoy the strawberry shortcake she knew would be for dessert tonight.

Chapter Three

He had not been able to quit thinking about her. Could there really be someone else like him out there? He'd heard of other vampires. For a period of time he'd even searched for them. And while he had met people who claimed to have met them, he had yet to cross paths with one himself. From their short interaction the day before, he could tell she might be hard to get close to, but somehow, Will was going to talk to Ashton.

Students started to trickle in. The first day tradition at Belle Ridge High School was to have a morning assembly to welcome students before they went to first period classes. Will made his way to the gymnasium to take his place with the other teachers.

“Will, over here,” a feminine voice called.

He didn’t even have to look to know it was coming from the direction of Valerie Talbot.

“Thanks, Val.” He smiled politely and sat down beside her.

Valerie had been teaching at Belle Ridge for two years, and she had been pursuing Will for almost as long. She was pretty and petite with blond hair and a sunny personality. While she was never what could be called “aggressive,” Will had enough experience with women to know when one was after him, and Valerie was definitely after him.

“Can you believe it's already time for another school year?” Valerie asked. “I feel like I just got over the last one.” She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear.

Will laughed too. “I feel like I've been doing this for decades.”

Principal Moore stood at the podium and faced the full bleachers, the teachers behind him.

“Good morning, students, and welcome to a new year at Belle Ridge High School.” He spoke with excitement.

As the principal continued his lively speech, Will surveyed the students before him. He recognized most of the faces. There were the sophomores, who were happy to be past the newbie phase. The juniors, who were happy to almost be seniors. Then there were the seniors, who were happy to revel in their new status as “rulers” of the school. The faces of the freshmen always made Will smile. Year after year, he still marveled at just how young they all looked, and how desperately they wanted to fit in with the other students.

Ashton Wallace was sitting in the middle of the crowd. A couple of boys were sitting on either side of her and both were desperately trying to get her attention. She was focused on Principal Moore and didn’t give more than a passing nod of polite recognition to her new admirers, and Will couldn’t help but be a little pleased.

If he had to guess, she hadn't been a vampire for very long. To the untrained eye, she probably just looked like another pretty high school girl, but Will could see something different. She had a mature beauty, and as time passed, she would become even more beautiful. Will had seen this happen in himself. As the years went by, he became more handsome. It wasn't vanity; it was just the way things were.

There was another difference between Ashton and the other girls: she had a weary wisdom behind her eyes and a formality in her countenance. She didn’t have the carefree innocence of an average high school student, and only someone who'd faced a similar stripping of the soul could recognize it. As much as he wished things could be different, he knew it would be hard for her to take part in the normal trappings of high school. Right now, Ashton probably felt like the trials and tribulations of those around her seemed frivolous at best. He wished he could tell her that with time she would learn to enjoy the little things in life again, just as he did…at least, he hoped she would.